Muscle Burns Fat

My first attempt at losing fat involved doing endless running on the treadmill and eating a low-fat diet.

Needless to say, this attempt failed.

I would work my ass off only to see a 2-3 pound weight loss in 1 month.

I would then lose motivation, give up and re-gain all the lost weight in a few days.

This happened about 3 times, and then I eventually just gave up on transforming my body.

That was until I came across as fat-to-fit transformation on the bodybuilding.com forums.

I saw a guy called Justin Robbins make a huge fat-to-fit transformation where he lost 65 pounds in 2 years, and I noticed that while losing the weight he gained a lot of muscle mass.

This led me to study bodybuilding for hours each day, and one thing I learned was that muscle burns fat.

In this article I will explain how this works.

How Muscle Burns Fat

When you have more muscle mass, your metabolism increases.

This means that you burn more calories at rest.

When you burn more calories at rest, it’s much easier to achieve a caloric deficit and thereby lose fat.

Besides that, muscle mass “tightens” up your physique.

The more muscle mass you have, the better you will look (as long as you build it in the right places).

Having a lot of muscle mass enables you to carry more fat while still looking good.

For example, if I had a small amount of muscle mass, I would look skinny-fat now.

However, since I’ve gained 40 pounds of muscle mass all over my body since starting my training in 2010, I’m able to put on some fat around my waist and still look good because I have big shoulders, upper chest, arms and ab muscles.

Right now, I’m about 205 pounds and I carry 14% body-fat.

This means that I have 28.7 pounds of fat around my body (almost all of it is around my lower waist, hips and thighs).

Now, consider if I hadn’t gained that 40 pounds of muscle mass since I started training.

In that case, I would be 165 pounds of skinny-fat at almost 17% body-fat instead of 205 pounds at 14% body-fat.

It’s a massive difference.

The lighter you are, the less body-fat you can get away with while still looking good.

How do you know you’re gaining muscle with measurements? I measure my weight and waist first thing in the morning every Saturday. If I gain weight but increase waist size does that mean I gained muscle. How do you know you’re gaining muscle and not just fat?

Oscar im confused what to do.
Im 6’0 171 and do pullups for 5 reps with 40lbs attached and can get 15 pretty easily when fresh. Im unsure whether to be cutting or bulking because Id estimated my BF% around 15-17 & I have a 32″ waist @ 6’0. I do have low testosterone that has only gotten lower as I have cut more. My strength standards arent good with DL-290×4 Incline BP 135×5 OHP 105×5. I do not gain strength in a deficit but do progress decently in a surplus. Should I follow the 3 week bulk 2 week cut model & focus on strength w/ extra volume during the bulk phase?